First 2024 CLSC Selections Announced!

The Devil’s Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan is a selection for Week Three: What We Got Wrong: Learning from our mistakes.

The story of phosphorus spans the globe and vast tracts of human history. Phosphorus has played a critical role in some of the most lethal substances on earth: firebombs, rat poison, nerve gas. But it’s also the key component of one of the most vital: fertilizer, which has sustained life for billions of people. As Egan harrowingly reports, our overreliance on this vital crop nutrient is today causing toxic algae blooms and “dead zones” in waterways from the coasts of Florida to the Mississippi River basin to the Great Lakes and beyond. Egan also explores the alarming reality that diminishing access to phosphorus poses a threat to the food system worldwide—which risks rising conflict and even war.

Horse by Geraldine Brooks is a selection for Week Five: Our Greatest Challenges (That We Can Actually Do Something About).

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, far from the glamor of any racetrack. 

 New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner noted for taking risks, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.

 Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.

Dances: A Novel by Nicole Cuffy is a selection for Week Nine: Rising Together: Our Century of Creativity and Collaboration with Wynton Marsalis.

At twenty-two years old, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer when she’s promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. She’s instantly catapulted into celebrity, heralded for her “inspirational” role as the first Black ballerina in the famed company’s history.   Haunted by the feeling that she doesn’t belong, she begins to unravel the loose threads of her past. Cece is faced with a choice that has the potential to derail her career and shatter the life she’s cultivated for herself, sending her on a pilgrimage to both find her brother and reclaim the parts of herself lost in the grinding machinery of the traditional ballet world.

Apple: (Skin to the Core) by Eric Gansworth is a combined CLSC and Young Reader selection for Week Six: Exploring the Transformative Power of Music with Renee Fleming.

In Apple: (Skin to the Core), Eric Gansworth tells his story, the story of his family—of Onondaga among Tuscaroras—of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.